On Tuesday, VR behavioral well being platform BehaVR and OxfordVR, a VR platform for extreme psychological well being points, introduced their merger. The businesses say their mixture creates the biggest digital actuality healthcare supply platform.
The businesses, which can unite underneath the BehaVR model, additionally garnered $13 million in Sequence B funding to help the merger. The spherical was led by Oxford Science Enterprises and Optum Ventures, with participation from Accenture Ventures, Confluent Well being, Thornton Capital and Chrysalis Ventures.
BehaVR’s founder CEO Aaron Gani will lead the brand new firm and its management group, which can embrace Dr. Daniel Freeman, a psychiatrist, researcher, writer and OxfordVR’s founder.
WHAT IT DOES
Tennessee-based BehaVR gives psychological and behavioral well being prescription digital therapeutics, together with remedies for stress, ache, nervousness and dependancy. The corporate additionally makes use of biometrics and machine studying fashions in its choices.
England-based OxfordVR, a spinout of the College of Oxford, develops immersive remedies for psychological and behavioral well being points. OxfordVR was constructed on 20 years of analysis finished by Freeman on the College of Oxford, the place he studied the potential of VR in creating automated psychological remedies.
In June, the corporate received FDA Breakthrough Device designation for its gameChange platform, which makes use of automated VR-based cognitive behavioral remedy to deal with extreme psychological well being circumstances.
“The demand for psychological well being companies far outstrips obtainable sources. Suppliers need assistance, and that assist is on the market at the moment via our clinically-validated and evidence-based digital packages,” BehaVR’s Gani stated in an announcement. “In bringing collectively two revolutionary digital actuality therapeutics groups, we’re positioned to serve the widest vary of affected person populations doable at a time of intense want.”
MARKET SNAPSHOT
In 2021, BehaVR and Japanese company Sumitomo Pharma signed a possible $163 million deal to create VR therapies to deal with social nervousness dysfunction, generalized nervousness dysfunction and main depressive dysfunction.
The partnership features a multiproduct, multi-DTx deal, and is among the largest collaborations between a pharma firm and a VR agency in historical past.
OxfordVR launched into the digital well being scene in 2007. Together with gameChange, the corporate created OVR social engagement, designed to deal with varied psychological well being circumstances related to sure varieties of nervousness, together with nervousness that accompanies agoraphobia, despair and schizophrenia.
